Education Information

I have been looking at psychoeducation testing for a while.
A way to understand if Nick understands things differently, how he can learn and what we can do to help. It can also help to diagnose learning disability (there are some learning disabilities associated with spina bifida and hydrocephalus) as well as improving study habits and school skills. We all know that the sooner you get a diagnosis the better.

A psycho-education assessment looks at learning and academic skills. Academic skills are reading, writing, math, spelling, listening and oral skills. All of the stuff that you use in school that gives you grades.

The psychological part includes intelligence, language skills, memory, how you learn (verbal and visual), concentration, planning, reflective response and eye-hand coordination.This is all stuff that helps you with your own way of learning.

So that is great to be able to assess all of this stuff. But how do they collect that information?

We have 2 appointments next month with the psychologist as part of the spina bifida clinic. We have it divided up into 2 days so that Nick doesn't get overwhelmed.
There will be one-on-one with the psychologist, a written questionnaire we have been left with for Kyle and me to complete as well as his teacher. I'm trying to go with an open mind to information-collect.

Recharged New Year

To end up our Christmas vacation (which started after Christmas for me) was some time away from everyone and everything.

We had a pile of movies (including all the Harry Potter movies), wii, snow and sleds and lots of warm clothes. We had no plans and the only expectation is to rest and recharge ourselves. And of course have fun

we have our party supplies for new years (along with a ton of finger foods, a bottle of wine and a big prime rib)

We had our treasure hunt, and settled into cottage life. We pulled out our games and had fun

2015 came, we counted down (as close as we could using our phones as a time keeper).

Then it was off to bed (some of us sooner than others)

 New Years Day we all got dressed up to celebrate the start of the year!

At the cottage there has been snow. So we dug out a path for Nick in his walker and all went out, until we got too cold

It wasn't actually that cold, which was nice. Katheryn lasted longer than the rest of us and made herself a snow fort.

We dried off enough wood so that we could have a fire.

And we could even roast some marshmallows

Sammie loves the snow, and I loved the sound of snow crunching (and nothing else)

The snow was one of the best parts of being up at the cottage. Don't have to drive anywhere, don't care about traffic, you shovel what you want to have fun and leave the rest.

And when you get too cold (or your parents drag you inside)... There is hot chocolate and some fun dancing to do.

Our last day was cold and windy.

We couldn't get Nick is his walker down by the lake (they wanted to go down). So Nick went down on the sled.

Once you broke up the ice along the top you had packing snow to make snowballs with!

Nick (and I) went inside earlier for our daily dose of hot chocolate. But Katheryn and Kyle continued to play outside.
I don't think either of them get cold!

Our 5 days away was a great time for the 4 of us (+grandma Ridding for one night). was really great for recharging ourselves. After the bustle of Christmas running around making sure that you see everyone and everyone has fun the time, what we needed was the time to just stop and enjoy ourselves.

Our Year of Family Fun!

Here is a sneak peak of some of the pictures over the last year!

New Years Fun

Looking at some fun things for us to do for new years, I found a couple of ideas on pintrest.
A year in review treasure hunt!
I went thru all of my pictures for 2014 and tried to pick out a couple of month.
Fun things that we did or funny pictures. I wrote on the back the month that the picture was from.
(I may have gone a little bit overboard)

Then I hid a bunch of them around the cottage.
Some in obvious places, some in sneaky places.

High and low.

Nick walks through the whole cottage with his walker.
The kids kept trading their photos so each of them had pictures of themselves.

It was a fun way to think about all of the things that we did all year.

I think we will do it again next year. With a couple of improvements.
I'll pick less pictures. Less pictures of the kids individually (because really it is only me know likes to see how they have grown over the year). Have pictures of actually doing things.
And I'll hide the pictures ahead of time (because we didn't get up to the cottage until New Years Eve I was trying to hide pictures while everyone was still around).

Medieval Times

My parents took us all out to Medieval Times again this year. The kids had such a great time last year that they were very excited to go again!

We had our knight-prince and princess all dressed up (never got a good picture of the 2 of them together)

And everyone was excited to cheer on our favorite knight!

My parents go us seats right up at the front

Our knight was the yellow knight

Katheryn got right into it. Cheering and waving!
Every time the knight got to throw a flower into the crowd she was very disappointed that she didn't get one.

Until the end when each knight got to pick a Queen of the tournament.
And she got picked (again)